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WASHINGTON — The Navy is investigating 30 or more senior sailors in connection with alleged cheating on written tests designed to qualify them as instructors at a school that trains younger sailors to operate naval nuclear power reactors, officials said Tuesday.

The reactors at Charleston, S.C., are of the kind used in propulsion systems for Navy submarines and aircraft carriers.

The alleged misbehavior is unrelated to Navy nuclear weapons carried aboard Trident submarines, according to Adm. John Richardson, the director of the Navy’s nuclear propulsion program. He said it came to light on Monday when a senior enlisted sailor at the Charleston training site reported the cheating to higher authorities. Richardson said the unidentified sailor “recognized that this was wrong” and chose to report it.

Pressed to say how many sailors were implicated in the investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, Richardson said a “ballpark figure” was something in the neighborhood of 12 to 20. But a short time later another Navy official said the number was approximately 30 but could change as the investigation unfolds. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss publicly any details beyond what Richardson and the Navy’s top officer, Adm. Jonathan Greenert, disclosed at a Pentagon news conference.

Greenert, the chief of naval operations, said he was upset to learn of the breakdown in discipline at Charleston.

Neither Greenert nor Richardson identified the rank of the alleged cheaters but described them as senior enlisted members. There are about 150 instructors at the Charleston site.

Richardson said the examinations on which sailors allegedly cheated included classified information. He said he could not discuss possible disciplinary action against those involved because the probe was ongoing. However, he said that anyone in the naval nuclear power program — either in a training setting or aboard a ship at sea — who is caught cheating would usually be removed from the program and “generally” would be kicked out of the Navy.

The decision to have Greenert and Richardson publicly announce the cheating investigation was a sign of how seriously the Navy takes the matter. The alleged cheating did not involve naval nuclear weapons and thus was not directly comparable to the Air Force’s investigation of alleged cheating by officers who operate land-based nuclear missiles.